


The Language of Joy

by JudeAraya



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Body Dysphoria, First Time, Goats, Healing, M/M, Post-Civil War (Marvel), Pre-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Self-Discovery, Sexuality, Wakanda, perhaps some purple prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2019-05-29 10:42:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15071501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JudeAraya/pseuds/JudeAraya
Summary: Offered safe harbor in Wakanda, Bucky begins to heal. As he does, memories of his old life and who he was surface, including how he once felt for Steve. After years of suffering, Bucky learns that even without expectation, desire is in itself a beautiful thing.Until one day when he unexpectedly kisses Steve.  And Steve kisses him back.





	The Language of Joy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [buckydunpun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckydunpun/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Language of Joy - Art](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15071540) by [buckydunpun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/buckydunpun/pseuds/buckydunpun). 



> My many kudos to both my artist kissmisssangbang for creating this stunning piece (and being so patient with me and my struggles) and to The_Cimmerians for encouragement and thoughtful beta.
> 
> Many thanks to KissMissSangBang for the beautiful art! [Please click here to see the other gorgeous pieces of art for this challenge](http://kissmisssangbang.tumblr.com/post/175306270662/art-created-for-capreversebb-chosen-by-the)

Wakandan heat shimmered off the ground, rising from the grass into the air. Bucky wiped a bead of sweat from his temple. The sky was a surreal blue. Some might have said he didn’t have much—a small home with the necessities, a little land and a few animals. To Bucky, it was an abundance, an embarrassment of riches. Not in materiality, but in a spirituality. The peace and the quiet. The simplicity.

 An uncomplicated life; nothing Bucky would have expected when he asked for the cryo. When T’Challa and Shuri offered home, protection, presenting it as a part of the recovery they’d come up with, Bucky had taken it the same way he had taken everything else over last 70 years. As impermanent. Not to be trusted.

 Months passed and it all remained his. He grew it. He worked the land—he learned to. Bucky didn’t mind their laughter even, as they taught him things he’d never known; how to care for a sick goat, what the seasons meant for the ground and the green, how to lean into silence without fear.

 Shuri had called him the white wolf, once, while he sat silent, unmoving as she fitted him for a new arm.

 “Why do you say that?” Bucky’s passivity wasn’t peaceful or docile. It was learned and beaten into him. Bucky had been the shadows for decades. He was the thing in the night you most feared, a ghost story and a horror at once. He knew the shadows’ shape and their texture, knew when to fold back into them and when he could risk the light.

 Shuri shook her head and smiled; her eyes spoke. They always did. Bucky just hadn’t learned their language. He couldn’t feel her fingers on the mass of scar tissue she touched. Then, again, he didn’t need to. Their existence was a reminder, a pain never erased, always haunting.

 “The tech in your old arm pains me,” she said on a laugh. “I can do so much more; you won’t even believe it.”

 Shuri’s smile and youth were endearing and Bucky couldn’t bring himself to dampen that. The thought of another arm repulsed him. It was a weapon. The moment she finished it, this all would be over. They’d ask him to fight. Steve would. Somewhere, now, Steve was as he always was. Defending, fighting. Even in shadows like he’d never done, even struggling to reorient himself to a new role, to a new life, Steve didn’t falter. Steve believed in Bucky—believed so much more than he should. Believed so strongly that Bucky longed to be the man Steve thought he was, despite the futility. He would fight when Steve asked.

 “Will you stay, and eat?” Shuri asked after he’d shrugged his threadbare, worn-soft shirt back on.

 “I’d like that,” Bucky replied. With tools away and talk of a new arm shelved until she needed him next, Bucky’s anxiety faded. Shuri couldn’t know what this arm really meant to him, but she was instrumental in his recovery. It was her technology and insight and compassion that was saving him. Not only had she designed his deprograming treatment, but she coordinated each step of it with those she’d chosen to be a part of the team. Often T’Challa would join them, and Bucky liked him best like this. With family, needling and bickering with his sister or softly deferential toward his mother. Confident. And if Bucky was honest, painfully handsome.

 It seemed that the more Shuri’s work woke a version of Bucky he’d forgotten, the more he surprised himself with who he was, who he had been, and who he didn’t remember. Bucky’s body, his desire, his happiness emerged as the Soldier was folded back and peeled away. And its loveliness took his breath. Perhaps once he felt guilt for this—he couldn’t remember—but now it was a gift. It wasn’t just a wanting for pleasure, although the fact that Bucky’s body held this potential was lovely. It was a hunger for affection that took him by surprise. The needs of his body for good, and the way they fed him, tucked down in a sheltered space he approached with tentative happiness. He wanted something, there was a thread of hope in this new world that he could have something like it, and it wouldn’t hurt. It could be so nice.

 ~*~

 Shuri had him wearing the newest prototype.  

 “Once it is complete, you will work with it,” she said. “Do everything you normally would.”

 Bucky touched the arm, noted the feedback loop of sensation, so much sharper than with his old arm. He smirked. “Where’s the fight then?”

 Shuri, bless her, had laughed and pushed at his shoulder playfully. Past her shoulder, Bucky spotted T’challa and Nakia. Something odd passed over T’challa’s face. Almost like he understood, like Bucky’s mask meant nothing. T’Challa was well versed in the power of a mask; it was clear he could see straight through Bucky’s false smile. Science, innovation, tools and toys—that’s what this all was to Shuri, bless her. She knew about fighting, but it wasn’t laid into her bones. She’d experienced war, but she’d never been hardened. No one had taken the joy from her.

 They’d ripped it out of him. Bucky was a shadow self now, the memory of a man.

 Once, in his first war, Bucky had learned how to hold his face, to make his eyes smile, to be the brightest boy whose hands no one saw shaking around the barrel of a gun. That this should be a memory, an instinct returned, surprised him. He had come to love Shuri as he must have once loved his sisters; he’d smile for her. He’d seen T’Challa’s love for her as well and knew that together they would keep this secret.

 “There is no fight,” T’Challa said, stepping out of the shadow. “Just preparedness.”

 “Future fight then,” Bucky said, hoping his meaning was clear in the words. _I won’t wear it today. I don’t want it. Only if I must._

 T’Challa clapped him on the shoulder. “May that day never come,” he said, smile grim and direct. Bucky’s eyes slid away; Shuri was engrossed in her work, focused on the possibilities, not Bucky’s reality.

 ~*~

 He went home, weightless without the drag of the arm, and went about the work of bedding down, feeding, settling the animals before getting himself ready for a night of nightmares, sleeplessness, or hopefully what rarely happened—dreams of Steve. He’d adjusted without complaint to work with one arm, to the weeks in a room with Shuri’s machines scanning his brain, to sessions working through his past, his triggers, his regrets. To doing anything possible to claw his way toward happiness.

 Back when Bucky had run to Bucharest, he’d been exhausted, dirty, in pain, and skirting hopelessness. He’d flickered in and out of selves, torn between the Soldier’s cold nothingness and Bucky, a broken man stumbling in a new world with no map and no resources. He’d managed to secure a small flat using a stash of Hydra cash from a bunker long forgotten. He’d covered the windows, scoped and plotted every and all escape routes he might need. He’d acquired several notebooks and forced himself to sit, writing anything that came to mind. He wrote until his hand cramped. He wrote through body-wracking shivers that had no known source. He wrote even when it made him sick.

 And he wondered, _why_? Why was he doing it?

 But he knew. He knew on the fourth day when suddenly a memory of Steve spilled like gold onto paper. Steve when he was still small, Brooklyn Steve, wrapped in blankets and recovering from a summer cold that had squatted in his chest. Bucky remembered then, viscerally, the simple joy of seeing Steve in a puddle of sunshine, smiling, both of them grateful for Steve’s returning health.

 What Bucky remembered then was joy. Joy, and Steve, and how Steve had made him feel something he couldn’t quite put into words, but that he could pull from his broken memories and hold close and hold tight to whenever hopelessness swept over him. Because Steve was in the world, and once, Bucky had been a man capable of simple joy, of uncomplicated love, of loyalty. He wanted to be that man again one day.

 In dreams it was simple. In dreams, all he had to do was be near Steve, and when he woke, it would throb in his chest.

 ~*~

 “Look what the cat dragged in,” Bucky said. No one and nothing could undo the Soldier’s training or instincts, so Bucky wasn’t surprised to find someone in his house. He was, however, surprised to see Steve, whom he hadn’t heard from in weeks.

 “That bad huh?” Steve looked down at himself. His uniform was dusty, with one long tear along his right bicep. The blood staining its edges was dry, so whatever injury he’d sustained had long since healed. Last Bucky had seen him, Steve had been flirting with a beard; now  it was full grown, a look that suited him.

 “It’s not too bad,” Bucky shrugged and pretended to be unaffected. He remembered Steve’s face in many lights—ill and drawn, filled out and suffused with an unnaturally healthy glow. Stoic and stubborn and righteous but never undone. His hair was long and slicked back carelessly. “You got a little-” he gestured at Steve’s jaw and let himself smile wide when Steve bumped his hand away.

 “I haven’t heard you laugh like that since 1941,” Steve said.

 “Naw, I’m sure you did something dumb in ‘42, at least, but who’s counting?” Bucky tried, and failed, to turn down his smile. There was a new stillness in Steve—Bucky thought maybe it was the contained quiet of a man with nothing to lose and too much to unleash—that was at times unnerving. Bucky thought maybe Steve didn’t used to watch him like this, without pause, unafraid of being caught staring.

 Maybe Bucky just wanted to be stared at. By Steve. Steve who was filthy and had obviously come to see Bucky as soon as he’d arrived from whatever mission he’d been on that he wouldn’t tell Bucky a thing about. Tousled and road-worn, he looked undone, and seeing him so Bucky felt a pang, deep and wide, to see him _undone_.

 “If I ever did something dumb, Buck, I was probably following you.”

 “Point taken,” Bucky said, and when Steve pulled him into a hug, he went without any resistance or hesitation.

 ~*~

 “It’s a funny thing, Steve,” Bucky said that night.

 “What is?” Steve’s eyes were cobalt in the firelight. In the night song of dusk, it seemed all of Wakanda pulled together for sleep. But not Bucky; the night was when he was usually most alone, left with layers of memories and selves to sort through.

 “Remembering.”

 “Buck-” Steve started. Bucky shook his head.

 “I don’t mean just the bad things. The things I did.” Bucky watched the fire, the bourbon and honey that washed Steve in a suffused gold. “Well,” he sent Steve a wry smile, “not always.”

 “So what are you remembering?”  Steve lay back against the grass, hands pillowed behind his head, eyes on the show of starlight. It was easier like that, when Bucky didn’t have to watch the hope, the bated breath, Steve waiting for something to click, to get the old Bucky back. Steve’s hope made Bucky careful about what he did and didn’t say. He would do anything for Steve, which meant navigating Steve’s longing for the old Bucky.

 “Sometimes I remember things and it’s like reading a book, like a story I know but had forgotten about. But it doesn’t feel like _my_ story. I’m watching it from outside. And sometimes I remember something and it’s a storm. Like someone threw me into the middle of it.”

 “That...that sounds like a lot.” Steve rolled onto his side, propping his head up. The dancing light and the long, taut lines of his body were, frankly, unfairly beautiful.

 “Sometimes,” Bucky said. He poked at the fire gently, watching the embers tumble, watching the flames reassemble. “It’s not as bad as it was. Before, the times I felt the most….integrated? I guess that’s the word. Were when I remembered the bad things.”

  _Hurting you._

 Bucky winced. Until recently, nothing in his life, in his scrambled memories, felt so present or viscerally gutting as Steve’s broken face on the helicarrier, or as Bucky’s fear, the animal fear that pulsed like a storm through him when Steve’s face, Steve’s words, cracked the Soldier apart. As he realized that under it all was another man, a broken man, a hidden man that Steve refused to forget or let go of again.

 “But now something is different?”

  _You_. Bucky plucked a blade of grass, running it against his lips, and tried not to imagine it as Steve’s finger, Steve’s touch. Because really, the wanting was its own sweetness, its own certainty. A thing no one could take away, so long as he held it close to himself. The power and importance of his own daydreams.

 “Yeah,” Bucky said. “I think so.” He let himself look at Steve for a few more heartbeats; let himself make a picture to tuck away, before rolling onto his back to watch the same stars Steve studied.

 ~*~

 Weeks later he woke from a dream steeped in wrongness. Steve was lost, or hurt. Bucky knew; a phantom twin pain radiated from his gut. In dreams he’d searched, finding no trace of Steve. Awake, it would be no different. Even if he knew, T’Challa wouldn’t tell him where Steve was. Bucky lay back; he let the scratch of his pillowcase ground him. It absorbed sweat and tears and when he traced his fingers over his belly, under his ribs, where pain ghosted. He could taste Steve’s fear as much as his own.

 Normally fear was his. This wasn’t a fear he knew though, because he wasn’t it, he wasn’t causing it. Instead, he was in its grip, at its mercy, a toy and a fool. There was an emptiness Bucky knew without knowing how. He closed his eyes again and wished himself back into the ice, back into cryo, back into a suspended dream.

 Cryo had always been his escape. Steve had tried to understand why Bucky had wanted to go back when they’d escaped to Wakanda but couldn’t. In cryo, Bucky couldn’t hurt anyone. Even as the Soldier, even as they trained and tortured him into compliance, with enough time out of the ice Bucky always began to leak through. They couldn't erase Bucky, no matter how hard they’d tried. Mostly, then, it had been bewildering, disorienting. Bucky had been the interloper and the Soldier hadn’t even had a name for him.

 It had been his failure for 70 years, his inability to let go and be the monster they wanted. Cryo was sweet relief. It was absence and silence.

 In Wakanda, with Steve’s eyes the last image Bucky carried with him into cryo the last time, Bucky wasn’t greeted with silence, but instead with a flood of dreams. It was in dreams that Bucky learned that before the war and the serum, before Steve became a paragon of his too shiny and steadfast belief, Bucky had been in love. He’d loved Steve in a way that was like breathing. Reflexive, necessary. Even in his anger during the war—and he was so fucking furious at Steve for changing his perfect, beautiful self—Bucky loved him so that he chose, easily, to go back into the war when he could have gone home.

 There was something in the way that Steve moved, in the way that he touched Bucky after Bucharest. It wasn’t sexual. It was a reminder, a grounding. As if Steve was checking, making sure that Bucky was still there. Bucky never expected more. Not in the ‘30s, not even when they shared a bed against the cold, or when they’d sleep with the Howlies, searching for warmth in the bitter winds. But he went into cryo with the memory of Steve’s eyes, with the knowledge that he’d never looked at Bucky the way he did just then. Everything stripped, heart raw.

 They were connected, he and Steve. And so Bucky knew, in his bones, that Steve was in trouble the moment he woke. Bucky didn’t remember calling Natasha, nor what happened when she never responded. He only remembered how the panic became so large he could taste it, taste it through every shortened breath with each day that they couldn’t find them. He remembered, vaguely, going to find T’Challa, and fighting to be heard, fighting to get away, and then nothing, nothing, nothing.

 ~*~

 He dreamed. Bucky dreamed and dreamed. Of Steve’s hands, and how it might feel to be touched after decades of pain. To be touched lightly, with respect. With a roughness that was pleasure soaked, that tasted like love. To be a man, and not a machine, not an automaton, not the shadow of a human whose mission was pain.

 Bucky knew the moment he closed his eyes how selfish he was. Somewhere, Steve needed him. And Bucky needed a mission. He opened his eyes.

 “We have news,” T’Challa said, sparing no introduction or niceties. Bucky struggled to push himself up on an arm that felt like jelly. He was in a room that was too white, too bright, painfully austere. His thoughts were slow, cottony.

 “News?” Bucky winced and cleared his throat. “How long’ve I been out?”

 “Steve, Natasha and Wanda have been located. They are all well at present.”

 “At present?” Bucky’s voice was still not more than a harsh whisper. “Are they here?”

 “No, friend. Unfortunately they cannot be for a while. But they are in a safehouse I will personally vouch for.”

 “Well.” Bucky stretched. “My arm is almost ready, right? I’ll need it.”

 T’Challa’s smile was so kind it bordered on condescension Bucky wanted none of. “No. It is not necessary. You are not needed for this fight.”

  _Of course I am_ , Bucky thought. _I’ll always be ready to fight for him._ He bit the words back at the last moment. In a sense, perhaps T’Challa was right. Thus far, Bucky had shied from Shuri’s attempts to have him wear and use his arm. He was unpracticed and it was new. He would be best in a fight, at his best to help, if he knew its complexities, quirks, how to handle the increased sensory feedback.

 He wanted to demand they give him his arm, right then, but knew better. They would never trust him with it in this state—which was smart because despite common sense even he couldn’t deny, Bucky couldn’t trust that he wouldn’t go charging off the moment he had it.

 “Am I free to go?” Bucky said instead. T’Challa tipped his head.

 “Of course. You’ll find that food has been provided for you.”

 Bucky winced. He had food, but it must have spoiled.

 “You were out for a few days.” T’Challa offered without elaboration. Bucky knew it would be useless to try to get more out of him. Time worked differently for Bucky in Wakanda. The only progression of time he’d paid attention to were the subtleties of Wakandan seasons. He measured the passage of days and weeks by his own recovery. Any time Steve was in trouble was too long, and a number or measure couldn’t change that.

 ~*~

 This time, when Steve came to see him, he was cleaned up and in fresh clothes. He was showered and his hair, while still long, was carefully styled. Even his fucking beard had been trimmed.

 “Do they think if you come daisy fresh I won’t worry about where the fuck you’ve been or what happened?” Bucky asked. He aimed for conversational, but he’d been lugging and tossing bags of grain, practicing aim and speed with his new arm. The first few bags had gone far afield as he wasn’t used to the added strength. Rather than confident or even edgy, he just sounded pinched. Or breathless. Despite resenting being treated with kid gloves, Bucky wasn’t immune to how well Steve’s shoulders filled out his shirt, how trim his waist was, and how he longed to span them both and test the warmth of his skin with his hand.

 Steve shrugged and had the decency to try to hide his smile by turning away and squinting into the setting sun. “It was Nat’s idea. You left her some messages.”

 Bucky turned away. He had no idea what he’d said in the messages.

 “I’m sorry we didn’t get them until recently. The safehouse we were in...well it was _really_ safe.”

 “What you’re saying is that you were cut off from the world,” Bucky said, then smiled. “You’ve missed a lot of news.”

 “Oh?” Steve perched on a hay bale, face settling into more serious lines.

 “Yeah. It’s been a ride.”

 “Damn. It wasn’t…?” Steve was obviously hesitant to talk about whatever had resulted in their trip to T’Challa’s safehouse.

 “Worse.” Bucky pushed his hair off of his sweaty forehead and sat next to Steve. Despite being cleaned up, despite the unfamiliar scent of shower products, Bucky could smell _Steve_ , his Steve, under it all.

 “Well, Jesus, Buck, don’t keep me on the line.”

 “We thought Arabella was pregnant. Turns out it was bad gas.” Bucky said it with as straight a face and as much solemnity as he could manage.

 “Christ, you asshole,” Steve said on a laugh, and pushed Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky pushed back, laughing, and soon enough they were wrestling. Bucky was mindful of his arm until he wasn’t, until Steve was too close and he saturated Bucky’s senses, his body and the sweet blue of his eyes. Steve went ass-over-kettle when Bucky shoved him then, too hard. Despite Bucky’s horror, Steve laughed, new clean clothes covered in dirt. He rubbed his chest.

 “I see the new arm is in good working order,” he said. Bucky turned away, mortified, and scraped his hand—his human flesh hand—over his face. “No, hey Buck.” Steve stood, his hand warm between Bucky’s shoulder blades.

 “It’s okay, sorry,” Bucky mumbled, pushing it all down, the mess of shame and revulsion and worry. He wanted to take it off, to rip it off, to apologize to Shuri but insist he no longer wanted to be that Bucky. But he knew he couldn’t. The proof was there, with Steve so close that Bucky wanted to turn and press his face into Steve’s belly, to press his body into those arms. There was something much more important at stake than his life. Steve.

 “You sure?” Steve looked him over carefully. Bucky knew what Steve saw. The fear he was hiding, the anxiety. But not the love. Not something so unexpected, not something he’d ever seen or had a name for from Bucky in any of their lives. “Oh come here asshole.” He pulled Bucky up and into a hug. Bucky absolutely did not let himself cling, but he did allow himself one long inhale and a strong, solid squeeze. Something to hold onto when Steve left again.

 Only, Steve hadn’t gotten the memo, because _he_ clung. He pulled Bucky closer and took a breath of his own. Something deep worked its way through him; Bucky felt its tremors shiver out from Steve’s muscles.

 “Bucky,” Steve said on a breath, two syllables whispered on an exhale. Bucky leaned back then to see Steve’s face, to try to get a read on him. Steve’s eyes were dark and wide and his hands were slipping from his waist, he was slipping away, he would go soon and Bucky would be left with nothing but wanting and worrying and thinking he’d squandered every chance he might have gotten.

 And so Bucky did the unthinkable. He kissed him.

 ~*~

 That night, Bucky contemplated the various shapes of loneliness and regret and remembered, weeks ago, telling Steve how funny and strange remembering could be. Only now he thought that perhaps it wasn’t remembering, but feeling. Funny, exhausting, complex things, feelings. Funny how one body could hold so many, and how one name could not ever be enough to capture the nuance of force behind it.

 Bucky had felt lonely before, but because he always wanted Steve by his side. In a room full of strangers Bucky always missed Steve when he wasn’t there. Perhaps the loneliness was more visceral, but it alone wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. It was breathing, only tonight, more labored.

 Regret was a language Bucky worked in the years since he ran away to Bucharest. Bucky-from-before hadn’t been half bad at picking up bits of language. Bucky-as-the-Soldier picked them up without effort. Bucky-now understood that regret was like Babel. He knew enough to know he barely knew a thing.

 Thankfully, Bucky was able to grasp a few threads. He was able to regret kissing Steve—regretting the shocked look on Steve’s face when he pulled back, Steve’s averted eyes and mumbled apology as he stood to leave, the shape of Steve’s back as he walked away, one hand running through his hair and making a mess of it. Bucky certainly regretted the loss of potential, the what-could-have-been, an imagined future in which Steve didn’t just return the kiss, but kept on kissing him.

 Despite regret, and loneliness, and Bucky’s aching body on the hard ground under a blanket of stars, Bucky was able to appreciate one small detail.

 For one beautiful moment, suspended between breaths, Steve _had_ kissed him back. Without that, this aftermath might have been unbearable.

 ~*~

 “Ok so let me start with an apology.”

 Bucky woke to booted toes nudging his side, dew on his face and damp through his clothes, and Steve standing above him haloed in the early dawn sunlight.

 “What?” Bucky sat, shaking his head to clear it a bit. Steve hunkered down next to him, crouching with this forearms on his thighs. “You did that yesterday.” He ouldn't look Steve in the eyes, not quite yet, and so he watched the sun glinting off of his new hand as he ran it over the grass, cataloguing the new texture and shape feedback.

 “No. That wasn’t a good apology, that was a reflex.” Steve sighed. “Buck, would ya look at me?”

 “I don’t gotta do anything,” Bucky said, mulish and fully aware that petulance wasn’t a great look on him.

 “Well, pal, that’s why I asked. I can order you if you like.”

 “Shaddup,” Bucky laughed at the patronizing tone, laughed at the relief of knowing Steve was trying to lighten the mood. Still mesmerized by the grass, Bucky heard rather than saw Steve settle in the grass next to him. Steve knocked his foot against Bucky’s, over and over, the metronome tick of a man patiently waiting out an enemy whose inability to hold on to silence with him was well known.

 After a bit, because he knew Steve was a stubborn fucker, and because he too wanted this taken care of, Bucky glanced over at him. Steve didn’t look troubled or angry, though he was serious.

 “Why’d you sleep outside?” Steve asked.

 Bucky shrugged. “Wanted to see the stars I guess.” _Wanted to test my body against the unending universe. Wanted to know that no matter what, it would keep going on, and it would be okay._ Steve looked up at the sky, the pinks and oranges of dawn giving way to the pale blue of day.

 “I know you think you don’t want to hear this, but I _am_ sorry.”

 “Pal, I hate to tell you this, but starting an apology by telling someone else what they think makes it a lousy apology,” Bucky said through laughter. Steve looked away, smiling too.

 “Touché,” Steve said.

 “Besides, you got nothing to apologize for,” Bucky said. He had a handful of grass and was rolling it around on his palm. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

 Steve shook his head and cleared his throat, and then carefully shifted closer until their shoulders touched. “It took me by surprise, is all. I want to be clear. I don’t think, and I’ve never thought there’s anything wrong with it. Being queer I mean.”

 Bucky took his time responding. He couldn’t remember a time when he thought of himself as such, although it was certainly possible that back in the day he had. He remembered wanting Steve—had come to understand that through time, he would always want Steve. It was too much and too complicated to explain though. At least now. Maybe later, once the air was cleared, Bucky would be able to articulate all of the things that coalesced into a single moment.

 “That’s good,” was all he said then.

 “I’d just never...never thought about it. With you.”

 Bucky squinted. “Never thought about being queer or just being with me?”

 “Either?” Steve shrugged.

 “Look,” Bucky sat up straighter. “You don’t gotta worry about it. I won’t- it won’t happen again. I don’t know what came over me.”

 “But…” Steve worried at his lip, then exhaled hard. He sat up straighter too, and to Bucky’s shock, put his hand on Bucky’s knee. “What if I want it to?”

 Bucky froze. Steve didn’t move either.

 “To clarify,” Bucky cleared his throat. “What exactly do you want to happen again?”

 Steve squeezed his knee and looked down with a half laugh. “You know, I’m not even sure.”

 “O-kay,” Bucky said. He squinted. He wanted to touch Steve’s hand. Luckily he was on Bucky’s good side, and so when he took a breath and did, sliding his fingers carefully between Steve’s, all he felt was the warmth of skin on skin. “How’s that?”

 “That’s...” Steve’s eyes were dark, even in the brightening day, “that’s real nice.”

 Steve’s fingers tightened and then pulled away, but it was okay because he began tracing Bucky’s fingers, his nail beds, the bumps of bone on his wrist. His brow was furrowed, the way it got when he was in serious thought. Bucky didn’t dare speak; instead, he let himself absorb and enjoy the light touch. Even if he could remember someone touching him like this in his life, he didn’t want to. It was lovely on its own. He shivered.

 “Is this-”

 “-it’s good.” Bucky’s voice was rough. He looked over at Steve.

 “You’re not used to this, are you? Being touched like this?” Bucky shook his head. He wondered what Steve would do, how his lips would fold if he were to crawl onto Steve’s lap and tuck his face into his neck. If he were to ask, plainly, to be held. Steve’s palm skirted up Bucky’s forearm, into the sweet crook of his elbow. Bucky gasped, just a little, then. Everything felt so sensitive. “Could I kiss you Bucky?”

 Bucky closed his eyes and bit his lip to hide a smile, before turning toward Steve. “Only if you’re sure.”

 Three slow heartbeats passed. Steve didn’t move much, and neither did he. They tilted, magnets drawn, until Bucky could feel the ghost of Steve’s breath on his mouth and then lips, warm and moist, on his. Bucky inhaled and told himself to let Steve lead, forced his hands still so that they wouldn’t grab and pull him close. Steve smiled; Bucky knew its shape even unseen. Steve tilted his head fractionally, and then captured Bucky’s lower lip with his own.

 “Oh,” Bucky sighed. Steve’s hand was on his cheek, Steve’s lips were more insistent, and Bucky’s heart was a helpless, crashing thing. Bucky leaned back on one hand and then when Steve pressed, gave in to the weakness coursing through him. Steve followed when Bucky lay back. His fingers were in Bucky’s hair and his tongue danced across the seam of his lips.

 Bucky didn’t mean to; or rather, he’d told himself in the seconds before this happened that he wouldn’t, but nothing could stop what roared up from him then. When he opened his mouth, when he kissed back, it was with a whimper. When he pulled Steve closer, fingers in his hair and wrapped around one hipbone, it was with a groan. And when the weight of Steve’s chest bore against him, pressing Bucky’s shoulder blades against the hard ground, it was with the prickle of tears barely kept at bay.

 Bucky never thought he’d want that again. Feeling helpless, held down, pressed in. But Steve would never hurt him. And it wasn’t only the trust Bucky reveled in, but the safety. Steve’s beard rasped against Bucky’s lips and chin. When he pulled away, lips parting with a small smack, Bucky ran his fingers through it. Steve turned his head and kissed the palm of Bucky’s hand.

 “So, not so bad as you maybe thought it would be.”

 “Bucky,” Steve opened his eyes. “Shut up if you want me to kiss you some more.”

 Bucky took his time, watching Steve’s face. Reading what he could there. Steve could be as closed off-as impassive as he. He’d gotten better at it too, since the Accords. He wasn’t hiding anything now and so Bucky held his tongue and waited, leaning into the desire. Leaning in when Steve’s lips found his again, and leaning in to the shelter of his arms and body.

 ~*~

 They traded kisses until finally the sounds of Bucky’s animals demanding care interrupted them.

“You probably have a lot to tend to.” Steve propped himself up next to Bucky, who was touching his tingling lips. Bucky shrugged and took a breath. He really did.

 “Are you leaving today?” He made himself ask. It was needy, _he_ felt needy and raw, but he had no defense and too much hope and frankly, hunger.

 “No. We’ll be here for a while until we get called away. T’Challa needs us for more meetings today though.”

 “Still working on the plan to open Wakanda?” Bucky forced himself to sit, tried to get his disaster hair under control. Steve smiled and nudged his hand away before beginning to do it himself. Bucky tried, he really did, not to melt into the touch. But apparently Bucky was now a hardened assassin who purred when someone played with his hair. Who knew?

 “Yeah,” Steve said. His hands were gentle but his face had lost its smile.

 “You don’t agree.” Bucky moved Steve’s hands, and although his rational mind hadn’t quite caught up to the situation just yet, his instincts were working just fine. He laced his fingers through Steve’s.

 “You can’t tell me you do either.” Steve said.

 “No. But...I’m happy here Steve. I get to have all of this and it’s more that I could ask for. More than I maybe deserve. I don’t think he should and it’s selfish. I got no rationality to add to the conversation.”

 “Hm.” Steve looked at their hands. Arabella bleated desperately.

 “I have to go milk her and feed them,” Bucky said at length.

 “May I-” Steve looked up, under his lashes, with a sweet smile Bucky would bet his hand was a completely intentional. Not that he was complaining because even so, it took Bucky’s breath away.

 “As long as you want to. Don’t feel like-”

 “Buck-”

 “Hear me out. I’ve had a lot of time to think about this. You haven’t. I won’t hold it against you if you decide you’ve come to your senses while you’re gone.”

 Steve sighed hard, stood, and pulled Bucky up. “You weigh less,” he said, surprised.

 “It’s the new arm,” Bucky said, spreading his fingers and showing Steve his palm. “Much lighter.”

 “That’s great. Must be a relief.” Steve touched the wrist. Bucky repressed a shudder of revulsion.

 “Yeah,” he said hollowly. Steve’s fingers traced the seams of each plate. Bucky breathed evenly, and forced himself not to push him away. It was a long time before Steve spoke again.

 “I’ll be back. I promise.”

 Bucky wanted to light into him, to ask him not to make promises he couldn’t keep. Worse, because this was Steve, to keep a promise for the sake of a promise. Steve caught the words on his lips before he could speak and this time, his kiss was hard. It was a promise. It was dirty and wet and breath-stealing.

 ~*~

 Things Bucky did accomplish that day: he tended to his animals, he cleaned his small home, he ate, and finally, he bathed.

 Things Bucky did NOT do no matter how much he wanted to: jerk off, daydream (okay so he was only mostly good on that one), and jerk off again.

 It wasn’t an expectation that should Steve come back and want to pick up where he left off, he would want to take anything that far. It wasn't even hope. Mostly, after years of solitude, Bucky wanted to share all of himself he could. Even his desperate need, because desire was a beautiful thing.

 The sun was on the horizon when Bucky set off to check on the goats one more time. He lost several minutes with Arabella. If asked he would insist he didn’t have a favorite. It was all a lie. She was sweet and demanding; she was not shy about letting her opinions be known. Bucky admired that. He was well aware that learning life lessons from a goat was questionable, but he’d learned plenty of shit in his life in worse ways. He’d take it.

 He didn’t have much but the simplest foods, but they served him best. Bucky wasn’t sure when Steve would come, and besides he’d had too many years of being forced to go hungry, so he ate. He had plenty more where it all came from, should Steve come hungry.

 Bucky had the windows open; it was close and humid inside, but the occasional breeze came though and the air smelled so sweetly of peace he couldn’t resist it. He’d close them before he went to sleep. Settled with a book on the low window seat he’d made himself when he first was learning to live the way he wanted, to order his world to his own desires, Bucky waited. He knew how to wait patiently; but for this, it was nearly impossible.

 Luckily, not much time passed before a long shape, shadowed by the setting sun, came down over the hill. Bucky tucked his hair behind his ear.

 “Hey,” he said, soft against the hush of evening and his own rising emotions. Steve stood in the doorway, shy of entering. “Come on, come in.”

 Steve stepped in and closed the door but didn’t move farther into the room, or speak.

 “I told you,” Bucky said. “You didn’t have to come back.”

 “Buck, after a century, shouldn’t you know I’ll always come back?” Steve pulled out and angled one of the simple wooden chairs at the table so he could face Bucky.

 “You know what I mean.” Bucky looked out into the night.

 “You know I’ve never done this before right?”

 “Done what?” Bucky asked. He wasn’t being dense, although he could see Steve was taking it as such.

 “Been with a man?”

 “Is that what’s happening? Going to happen,” Bucky corrected himself. It sounded like a challenge, but Bucky knew it was anxiety.

 “I don’t know. You tell me.” Steve’s hands dangled between his knees, where he’d put his elbows. His hair hung half in his face, clean and loose.

 “It doesn’t really work that way, I don’t think,” Bucky said slowly. “I can’t...it’s not all on me. I don’t have expectations. I couldn’t have expected any of this. I never meant to do it in the first place.”

 Steve’s eyebrows shot up. “But you wanted to, right? I didn’t- this afternoon...you didn’t feel like you had to or anything?”

 “Steve.” Bucky leveled him with one look. Steve sighed and they were both quiet for a long time. Eventually Steve came over, and offered him a hand.

 “This would be much easier if you weren’t so far away, and I don’t think that was built to withstand two of us.”

 “Nowhere much for us to go though.” Bucky stood and let Steve keep his hand.

 “Are you being thick on purpose?” Steve asked. He tugged Bucky over to the bed. “At least sit next to me.”

 Bucky sat, and with Steve next to him, sagged against him. Steve smelled fresh; still a little like the man Bucky knew through the years, but also like the bath products he’d smelled before. Bucky wanted to chase that honest scent, so find every secret place where Steve was his most basic.

 “Look Steve,” Bucky started, then stopped to choose his words carefully. “Things come back to me, but they ain’t complete. So I couldn’t tell you if I’ve done this before either, to be honest. What I remember is...you. Wanting you. And maybe then I tried to hide it. Maybe I was ashamed, maybe I wasn’t but I just knew it wasn’t in the cards. I got no idea.”

 Steve’s head was cocked, eyes so seriously on him. Bucky took a breath, and a chance, and smoothed his thumb against the furrow between his eyebrows.

 “It’s okay either way Steve. Any way. The first time I realized I felt like that it was...a gift.”

 “How so?” Steve asked.

 “It’s a good thing, wanting. It feels so...human. My body has been a burden and a weapon for so long. I think I probably know every way a person can hurt or be hurt. Even if I never have this, wanting it is still...it’s like a miracle, Steve. I guess that sounds pretty dumb, huh?”

 “No,” Steve said. He cleared his throat, but still his voice remained tight. “That...not at all.”

 “Hey.” Bucky turned to him. “It’s gonna be okay, no matter-”

 Steve’s kiss, unexpected and rushed, missed at first, catching only the corner of Bucky’s mouth. It was okay though, it was perfect, because Steve put his hand on Bucky’s face and kissed his way across his lips, up to his cheekbone, to his ear. Bucky shivered; this was unexpected, it was all unexpected but also he felt like he could breathe for the first time in years, even when Steve’s mouth made it come short. Bucky’s fingers tangled in Steve’s hair. Steve bit him, below his ear, making Bucky’s fingers tighten probably too much. Steve hissed, whispering a fervent _don’t stop don’t stop_ against the damp, kiss-slicked skin of Bucky’s neck.

 “Lie down with me?” Bucky pulled away from Steve to look into his eyes. “We don’t have to know where this is going. I don’t expect anything-”

 “Well I do,” Steve said, crawling up onto the bed, bringing Bucky with him. “I don’t know what I’m doing, but I figure we can keep doing this, and I expect that if either of us wants to stop, we’ll say so.”

 Bucky remembered who he was, before the war. He remembered often, and keenly, Steve. And yeah, war had changed them both. Decades between them, the world they were in now, all of it affected them. But there was also a _himness_ , a core to Steve that never changed. With him right now, Bucky felt for the first time like maybe he did too. Like there was part of Bucky Barnes who had been in love with Steve Rogers as a kid, who was now getting everything he ever wanted. And he knew nothing would make him stop. He’d take everything Steve gave him with open, greedy hands.

 Bucky tugged on Steve’s hair again, harder. “Well then, come on. I can’t tell ya to stop if we don’t start.”

 They were both still laughing when Bucky pulled Steve in for a kiss. Laughing and maybe a little cautious, but Bucky knew from this afternoon what caution could be a prelude to. He pushed on Steve’s shoulder and flipped him. He didn’t want to worry, not with Steve, and maybe that meant forgetting caution and trusting that Steve would speak up if he went too far. Bucky straddled Steve’s waist, tucking in closer for another kiss before tugging at the loose cotton collar of his shirt to discover what kinds of noises he could wrest from him.

 Turned out Steve was awfully quiet, unless you were right up close. Unless you already knew all the ways Steve could breathe. Until you discovered a new one, breath punched right out of him with pleasure. Close like this, Bucky could feel the shivering up of pleasure in Steve’s body. He could read it in Steve’s fingers, digging so tight against Bucky’s waist and hip that it hurt.

 Bucky bit his collarbone and when Steve arched against him, eyes shut, color high on his cheekbones, tugged at the hem of his shirt.

 “You too,” Steve said, sitting up to take it off roughly. Bucky didn’t hesitate.

 “God,” he whispered, hands spanning Steve’s chest.

 “Ain’t like you never seen it before,” Steve said on a laugh.

 “I’ve never touched it before.” Bucky scraped a nail against Steve’s nipple. “Not like this.” Steve’s thumbs dug into his hip bones, then traced the cut vee of his pelvic muscles to the waistband of his pants.

 “You look like the cat that got the canary,” Steve said. Bucky settled down onto Steve then. He had been holding himself up, careful of his own greed. Now, with Steve’s fingers slipping under the edge of his pants, ghosting over the button and zipper, his need for Steve was a hunger too big for him to keep in check, not when there was a literal feast at his fingertips. He rocked against Steve, feeling how hard he was. Steve grinned—something happy and bright, like _oh isn’t this fun_ , and Bucky could have laughed out loud. 

“I feel like one.” Bucky grunted when Steve pressed a palm, sure and hard, against his cock. It wasn’t that he didn’t want that, because he did. But suddenly he knew he needed to be close. Here, with Steve, he felt joy. Too much. He felt the vastness of its nuance. He knew it could break him and knew it could bring him higher and higher toward something beyond himself. He leaned in to capture Steve’s lips and let himself be crushed against Steve when his hands came around to cup Bucky’s ass and pull him close. Bucky wished then that he knew every dialect for joy, so that he could feed each word right into Steve’s lips and kisses and skin.

“Can we-” Steve tugged on Bucky’s pants and at his nod, began the work of getting them both naked.

“Jesus you’re something,” Steve said, one hand on Bucky’s flank and the other at his throat.

“Look at you, never thought of being with a man, huh?”

 “Don’t mean I’ve never appreciated a fine male form,” Steve quipped, which was fair. Bucky remembered Steve taking a drawing class or two in Brooklyn, remembered him coming home and talking about what it was like, having to learn to draw nudes.

 “C’mere and kiss me before you think too hard about what you’re doing,” Bucky demanded.

 “Buck,” Steve said, stopping him. “I _want_ to think about it. I been thinking since last night.” He stopped when Bucky scoffed. “Okay so maybe I haven’t had the time you have. But I wouldn’t’ve come if I didn’t _want_ to do this.”

 “You sur-” Bucky caught himself on a gasp, just barely catching a glimpse of Steve’s self-satisfied smirk as he took Bucky in hand. His palm was so hot and there was no hesitation, no slowing or uncertainty in his steady, smooth stroking. Bucky bit his fist, focusing on that sharp sting, to keep himself from coming embarrassingly soon.

 “Tell me how you like it?” Steve said, lips at Bucky’s cheek.

 “I like it, that’s how,” Bucky managed. He rocked his hips up, chasing and chasing how good it felt even as he ordered himself to slow down.

 “You know, after the serum, everything changed,” Steve said. “The craziest was this.”

 “What?” Bucky dug his fingers into Steve’s bicep, spreading his knees a little, inviting Steve to slot himself between his legs.

 “I could come and come and come.” Steve laughed a little, then rocked against him. Bucky squeezed him between his thighs. The catch and slide of their cocks brought him back off the edge. It felt good, but the friction was just a bit much. Still, it was pretty much perfect because like this, Steve was closer. Like this, Bucky knew they were really in it together. “I thought sometimes that maybe it was just pent up, that I was young. But even after the ice, it was like that.”

 “I guess I know what you mean.” Bucky said. He’d gone so many years without pleasure, he’d figured the same.

 “I bet I could bring you off all night Buck,” Steve whispered, sending a jarring shudder through him. Bucky mapped the shifting muscles of Steve’s wide shoulders and narrow waist, the clench and release of his ass as he rocked harder against him. He moved slow and sweet and Bucky’s body was melting, soft into pleasure and hard into need.

“Kiss me,” Bucky said when he knew he was going to come. When he realized that just knowing Steve was like this, knowing a new Steve who was confident and sensual and demanding, was enough to get him off.

 The first time he came, Steve came with him, and they caught each other’s moans between kisses they couldn’t be bothered to stop, through ragged breaths and uncoordinated aftershocks. Steve panted against Bucky’s mouth; Bucky licked the sweat from the cupid’s bow of Steve’s lips. He’d forgotten to close the windows and their bodies were a slippery mess, musk and salt and come.

 “Hey,” Steve said quietly. He rolled onto his side, Bucky’s head cradled in his arms. Bucky closed his eyes. His body was singing to him and his heart was a mess. Joy, as nuanced as regret, curled up inside. Joy which wished for more, and more and more. “Bucky.” He felt Steve’s touch on his cheek, and when he opened his eyes, they were blurred with the tears Steve was catching on his fingertips. “Bucky.”

 “I didn’t say stop, did I?” Bucky whispered, and when Steve smiled, Bucky kissed leaned up and kissed him, and kissed him again.

 

 

 

 


End file.
